THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING IN THE GEOSCIENCES

Open Access (OA) publishing in the geosciences began in the 1990s and has grown steadily. By 2013 the proportion of new earth and environmental science papers that were freely available online in some form had surpassed 50%, according to one analysis. Today more than 125 OA geology journals and series are indexed by the GeoRef bibliographic database. Open Access takes many forms, ranging from publication in OA journals to self-archiving (green OA) in open repositories of various kinds. This paper surveys recent trends in gold and hybrid OA journals in the geosciences and examines the impacts that OA publishing has had on the geoscience literature. We contrast OA vs. subscription journals using citation metrics, impact factors, and other measures on both the journal and article level. Publication fees of major geoscience publishers and those in related disciplines are compared. We report the results of an analysis of publishing patterns of geoscientists at our two institutions – a major research university and an independent research institute – to identify trends in authors’ acceptance of OA as a publishing option. The question of whether OA publishing offers a comparative citation advantage in the geosciences is considered.